Odyssey Points
This mechanic is meant to be paired with the "Odyssey" genre. The overall goal is to encourage a narrative snapshot of a long stretch time as it passes. The characters find ways to occupy their time or their nerves become frayed. As a side benefit, it gives consequences to decisions like "we travel north on the trail for 5 months", which, while a player may be willing to pass with a simple statement, a character would find arduous and unpleasant. This could be used to simulate travel, guard duty, occupation of a territory, or many other necessary activities that many people would consider boring in real life. Base Mechanics If you spend more than 4 hours in a day with nothing to do (usually during traveling), that character starts to accumulate "odyssey points". The starting value is 5 odyssey points. For extended trips lasting multiple days, the character continues to accumulate this with each day. The player then declares actions taken during the trip with the goal of reducing the point total to 0 odyssey points. Beyond the Genre Bonus, STs should reward interesting actions with Merits or unique opportunities when appropriate. Ways To Reduce Points The sane ways... Stunting Interesting Stuff Stunts of activities to occupy time or relieve boredom remove a number of odyssey points equal to the stunt level for a number of days where the stunt is effective for relieving tensions. For example, playing the same card game is only going to be entertaining for so long, but playing multiple card games and maybe making up your own house rules with your traveling companions could keep things fresher for longer. Working On Things You Care About Taking actions that uphold, further, or protect one of your character’s Intimacies removes a number of odyssey points equal to the Intimacy level for as many days as the action is taken. This can include training, as long as what's being trained would uphold, further, or protect an Intimacy. Entertainment Being successfully affected by an Inspire action removes 2 odyssey points from that day's roll. Planning and Innovation As long as the character has one Major Project slot open for the entire day, a character can dream about their ideas and spend 1 silver crafting XP per odyssey point removed from the accumulated dice in the Downtime roll from that day. At the end of the downtime, the character gets 1 gold crafting XP for every 2 silver crafting XP spent this way. Doing this does not preclude the character from performing crafts projects themselves (in fact it will likely be necessary in order to accumulate enough silver crafting XP in order to buy off all the odyssey points). Sometimes it's just too much... Conflicts Arise Taking or giving a negative Tie removes 2 odyssey points per day for the entire downtime per Tie taken / increased. The increased / taken a negative Tie needs to be toward someone or something you were exposed to on the trip or could be given to / increased in another character (with their player's permission) toward you. You Just Snap Those characters that have a Limit Track can remove 1 odyssey points per die of Limit rolled. For player that choose this option, multiple Limit Breaks can happen with a long enough trip. These Breaks might occur multiple times in a row after normal play resumes. Alternatively the ST might choose to have them occur during the downtime and be reflected as negative Intimacies in yourself, other characters, changes in Merits, or additions of Flaws.Category:House Rules Category:Core Book Category:Core Book - Chapter 5 System and Conflict Category:House Rules on General System Structure